Punishment Based On Shame Would Cut Inmate Population

Sixty-nine-year-old Leona Helmsley has been sentenced to four years in prison for tax evasion. The severity of the sentence is really no surprise-judges feel an obligation to slap brutal jail terms on high-profile, white-collar criminals. They seem to think such sentences prove that rich and poor stand equal before the bar of justice. In truth, the high-profile, white- collar criminal stands less chance of justice than a common street thug.

But if the sentence on the obnoxious Helmsley was too harsh, what is the alternative? Surely sentencing her to perform community service would have left us unsatisfied.

We have become appallingly hidebound and stodgy in our ideas about how to punish people, turning reflexively to prison despite the knowledge that two-thirds of those who do time eventually come back to jail. Only occasionally do we hear of a judge attempting to match the punishment to the crime.

One consequence of this lack of creativity is a dangerously overburdened prison system. A General Accounting Office study reports that federal prisons are 56 percent over capacity, holding 48,017 inmates in facilities designed for a maximum of 30,860. At the level of the states, prisons are holding 23 percent more inmates than they were designed for. One needn`t be sentimental about the comfort of convicts to be concerned about those numbers.

Plans are in the works to build more prisons. But the price tag is steep: $51,340 per bed. Accordingly, the usual proposals are circulating for

``alternative sentencing``-things like electronic bracelets to incarcerate people in their own homes, and halfway houses. That`s all hooey. What`s needed is a return to shame-based punishment. If prison doesn`t scare them, maybe humiliation will.

Let`s bring back the stocks. Yes, really. Back to our colonial heritage. The stocks were a very shrewd punishment. Not painful or disfiguring like other punishments of the time, they relied upon psychological anguish. They put people in a humiliating posture and made them suffer the scorn of society. The stocks might be just the answer for Helmsleyesque criminals. Imagine Jim Bakker forced to place his head through two wooden blocks with his limp hands hanging on each side. He could be placed in the center of

Charlottesville, Va. Wouldn`t that be condign retribution? (Even acknowledging that humiliating postures are not new for Bakker.) Another set of stocks could accommodate Leona Helmsley in Central Park. Wouldn`t that spectacle make other tax cheats think twice?

Punishment by humiliation would not be appropriate for violent criminals. But 45 percent of state inmates are imprisoned for nonviolent offenses, and fewer than one in five federal inmates is doing time for violent crime.